Have you ever had a sales person come up and ask, “what do you think about this new prospecting template I came up with Boss?”

The answer is obvious.

“I don’t know. Test it.”

That’s the great thing about so many aspects of sales. Gut instinct is necessary; however, the data can be such a guide for best practices.

Being a data geek myself, I got pretty excited when one of the data scientists here on the Signals team analyzed the results of 6.4 million sales emails. The full report is here. Below are three observations I found to be interesting. [Read more…]

From 2000-2005, I worked for a guy named Stu Silverman. He is one of the original thought leaders in inside sales and sales development and in my opinion, is the greatest in the business. His company, Sales Ramp, has worked with 100’s of companies in the valley over the last 30 years including Cisco, Sun, and Oracle. As the sales development revolution continues its upswing, remember the originals — Stu is one of them.

On a personal level, he was my Dicky Fox, the fictional character in the movie Jerry Maguire. To remind you, here is Dicky Fox from Jerry Maquire:

A couple months ago, a young sales person who I worked with a year ago asked for a call to re-connect. He kicks the call off with: “I am calling because I thought you might know some people who might need my service.” My reaction: Nice to hear from you too. He then goes through the entire call and finishes with: “So if you know anyone, send them over to me.” Pffft. Nice job dude. I not only have no reason to help you, but I like you a lot less. Let me go down the line: [Read more…]

I am hoping over the next two weeks to do some quick blog posts. (I always say that). But, this time I am serious. I have been picking up great stories over the years and have been meaning to weave them into bigger posts. Now, I just have to get them out there. Today is one of those. [Read more…]

This will be short. So…I was watching Ralph Barsi’s Dreamforce presentation: “Sales Development Professionals Must Represent” and the first thing he told the audience was an instruction: “Draw a line down the middle of the page. On one side takes notes and on the other side write down the action items you are going to go act on immediately.” (Not an exact quote). Anyway, Ralph is not the “Most Disorganized Man on the Face of the Earth”, that would be me…The point of this post is the fact that his tip of splitting the page in half is something I have done for years. Before we move on, here is the video of his presentation.